Wednesday, February 08, 2006

Never doubt an eight year old

At least when it comes to monsters.

My son has been researching his assigned biome of the rainforest. He came home from school last week proudly announcing that there is a kind of Amazonian fish that can swim inside your body while you are peeing and live on your blood. Ever patient, ever encouraging father that I am, I immediately told him that he must have misread his information, and that what he was talking about is surely some microscopic parasite.

He told me that I am absolutely wrong and that I don't know everything.

Obnoxiously, however, I often convince myself that I DO in fact know everything, including the fact that internal parasites are invertebrates, NOT fish.

PS Moral of the story -- besides the fact that I am a failure as pater -- is that this gruesome fish is surely a monster ... talk about category violation. I share this information because I am so busy indexing my book that I haven't been able to post another blog about animals as promised.

Shoot! That didn't appear the way I wanted it to appear, with a link and all. If you go to the Vancouver Sun web site and do a search for "temperate rainforest" you'll get all the news about the rainforest. (The Washington Post also ran a piece about it yesterday or the day before.)

Indeed. The Washington State Peninsula (the thumb portion of the hand if you make a Washington State shape)) is a temperate rainforest.

Here’s as good a place as any to share a moment with the elder (3-year-old) nephew. We’d bought him a plastic dinosaur toy with which he (lil’ D) was merrily stomping about. I asked, “What do dinosaurs say?” His answer: “Thank you.”